


Scientific Method

by absurdiist (workthewentz)



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Body Modification, Character Death Fix, First Meetings, Fuck yeah rarepairs, M/M, Surgery, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:35:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/workthewentz/pseuds/absurdiist
Summary: “Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats.” –Bruce SterlingEmergencies were common in Vaclav’s shop. It was more often than he’d like to admit that he found himself inside one of his patients, bloody scalpel in hand, cutting them open to reveal some monumental problem with their augmentations.
Relationships: Ivan Berk/Vaclav Koller
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	Scientific Method

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Wolf/Drake for beta-ing this for me! You said the Ivan/V tag needed more, so I tried to deliver <3
> 
> Content warning for relatively gory images of augmentations, organs, and blood.

“Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats.” –Bruce Sterling

Emergencies were common in Vaclav’s shop. It was more often than he’d like to admit that he found himself inside one of his patients, bloody scalpel in hand, cutting them open to reveal some monumental problem with their augmentations. Contrary to popular belief, it was these situations that Vaclav liked least about being an augmentation specialist. Pushing the limits of technology, walking the razor’s edge, but holding someone’s life, fragile and delicate in his hands.

(And no matter what the wackos at the MachineGod church thought, he wasn’t hooking up anyone’s consciousness to the cloud.)

But it was also very frequent that a customer came in with a life-threatening injury, so Vaclav rolled up his sleeves and got to work, every time. Eventually, he realized that he should just cut _off_ the sleeves; that’s why his lab coat had turned into a lab _vest_. And he didn’t notice when he stopped being queasy after digging around in people’s organs, stopped wanting to vomit every time he had to pour bucketfuls of blood into the drain on the floor of the shop.

This was how he met Ivan Berk: being dragged in by a figure in a hoodie with sprinter blades like his, bleeding in various places and grumbling though he was barely lucid. The figure deposited him in the chair and then disappeared in the flash of sparks usually attributed to the Icarus Dash. Vaclav was shocked, but this wasn’t the first time this had happened. People knew who he was and how he operated, that he’d help those that needed it as long as he had the means. He wasn’t about to mess up that reputation. So, he stood and got to work.

The guy’s organic wounds looked just as pressing as the ones to his augmentations, but he was still groaning and trying to readjust himself in the chair. He couldn’t work with this guy writhing all over the place, but he wasn’t about to sedate anyone without their permission. So he started checking him over as thoroughly as he could, bandaging wounds and smoothing numbing cream over bruises. Then he got to work on the augs, running diagnostics and rebooting where he could.

Until he got to where he couldn’t, and had to cut into the guy’s arm to access the port where it connected to the bone mounting. “Shit, man, I’m sorry,” he said, needlessly because when he looked up the man had passed out in his chair. “Oh. Well…” He continued working, pausing only to ensure the guy was still breathing, until the arm was functional again. Or at least, functional on the diagnostic. He’d have to wait until he was awake to make sure it was _really_ functional.

But it didn’t seem like that was happening anytime soon, so while the guy dozed in his chair, Vaclav set out to try and find out who he was. His nose was more of a giant bruise, but Vaclav didn’t think he recognized him. The yellow hoodie he was wearing had been sliced where his wounds were, on his side and chest. There was another slice near his stomach, and Vaclav realized it was… a pocket! He dug around in the pocket and procured a set of documents, an ID for an Ivan Berk and an aug license that was blank where the name should be.

Vaclav knew better than to ask questions. So he slid the documents back into Ivan’s hoodie pocket and settled in with an e-reader to wait.

When the guy – Ivan – finally raised his head, he was bleary-eyed and disoriented. His accent was thicker than Koller’s, and his voice was deeper. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, before realizing that the pounding in his head was attributed to trying to sit up. He surrendered to the pain, letting his head fall back onto the chair. Vaclav stood, coming closer so that he was within reach but far enough to jump back, just in case. “My name is Doctor Koller,” he said slowly. “You were brought in pretty fucking beat up. I _really_ suggest you take it easy for the time being.”

Of course the guy completely ignored his advice, trying to raise his head again, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. “ _You’re_ Koller?”

“In the flesh! Seriously though, man, you need to lie down,” Vaclav replied, a clinical tone kicking in involuntarily. “You sustained some real damage. I see you have a Sentinel, that should start repairing some of it. But your arm is going to take a bit longer.”

Ivan snorted, completely ignoring his rant and moving to sit up in the chair, not without a few winces when he stretched the injuries on his torso. He caught sight of his repaired arm and raised an impressed eyebrow. “Nice to see the stories are true.”

“What-what stories?” Vaclav stuttered, worried for the recklessness of this stranger.

“That there’s at least one good aug doctor in Prague.” His low tone, coupled with the appraising once-over he gave Vaclav as he spoke, turned the doctor’s cheeks a deep red. “What do I owe you?”

Vaclav stuttered again, unused to someone offering to pay so candidly. Usually there was begging involved. He found himself disappointed, though, that the stranger was so quick to leave. “A couple vials of nu-poz and we’re even, unless you wanted to make this a regular thing.” He hoped Ivan would say yes; there was something calming, sobering about his presence. He’d come in needing help but was back on his feet within just a few hours. But Vaclav could see the pain, barely concealed, in the way he hunched in on himself, in the small winces when he moved the wrong parts of his body.

He dug two vials of neuropozyne out of pockets on his jacket and sat them on the small table beside the chair. “I might take you up on that, Doctor Koller,” he said, and stood. Vaclav heard the grating sound of the sewer entrance opening, and he was gone.

—————

The shop saw plenty of business in the following weeks. Members from the MachineGod church came in for maintenance, enticed by proximity and Vaclav’s notorious weakness for begging. He met a tall, scary government operative named Jensen who existed to both terrify and arouse him. But he didn’t see Ivan again, and when he did it was not under good circumstances.

He stood in front of the television, eyes glued to the holographic surface. Onscreen, Eliza Cassan droned on in her infuriatingly neutral tone peppered with anti-aug sentiment. There had been another bombing, closer this time. Ruzicka Station was in shambles, unrecognizable and still smoking as rescue firefighters and volunteers alike picked apart the rubble looking for bodies. He was filled with anxiety, mostly for the augmented population of the city but a little for himself and his shop. He knew security was only going to tighten in the coming weeks, that many of his customers were set to be deported to Golem. There wasn’t much he could do about it, though, except keep fixing people who needed fixing and hope the cops feared the Dvali enough to leave him and his little corner of Prekazka alone.

He was distracted from his musings by the grating sound again; he hadn’t expected anyone to come in today. He started when he realized it was Ivan, stumbling into his shop and bleeding from an unidentifiable head wound. Involuntarily, he threw himself into work mode, clearing the chair and thanking his lucky stars he’d just sanitized the shop.

Ivan didn’t seem to know where he was, which was a problem for multiple reasons. The most pressing one, though, was that he wouldn’t let Koller touch him. He seemed to be caught in a flashback loop, batting the doctor’s hands away anytime he tried to get close. Eventually Ivan’s swaying got to be too much for Vaclav’s comfort, and he activated the strength augs he’d installed for times like this. He locked his hands around Ivan’s wrists and pulled, guiding the injured man to his chair.

Ivan blinked, but let himself be led. Vaclav planted his hands on Ivan’s shoulders and gave him a firm push, forcing him to take a seat on the rusted surface. “You _sit_ until I fix you.”

“I don’t need to be fixed, I’m fine,” Ivan insisted as he tried to stand, and promptly collapsed. His sprinter blades automatically scrabbled for purchase on the concrete and he fell forward into Vaclav’s arms.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he sighed, as he maneuvered Ivan into the chair and started hooking up wires to his augmentations a second time.

This time was much worse than the last; it seemed that something had knocked _every single one_ of Ivan’s augmentations into overheating. At least there were less organic wounds this time, but it was hard to celebrate when Ivan’s Sentinel was too busy regulating temperature to heal his cracked ribs, his over-pressurized lungs. He’d breathed in soot, too, and Vaclav’s mind raced with the worst possible reasons that could be before he shelved it. Speculation could wait.

The augs needed rebooting, before the overheating gave his organic parts second-degree burns and made another problem for them. So he started with that, resetting Ivan’s limbs one by one until the Sentinel stopped nearly freezing itself to compensate and focused its efforts on his ribs. But the scans showed that Ivan’s lungs were reaching critical condition, blast lung tearing at his airways, so against his better judgement he grabbed a scalpel.

Vaclav gritted his teeth as he imagined the pain Ivan must be going through; he was passed out, but the doctor knew firsthand that the unconscious mind could be crueler than the conscious one, and not as good at managing pain. But Ivan still was in no condition to consent to sedation. Instead, Vaclav injected him with the strongest painkillers he could find and cut into the skin at his ribcage.

The blood didn’t bother him anymore. He was used to the gore of augmentations. The way that most internal augs were wired into the central nervous system, connecting bone, muscle, and tissue fascinated him even. But this was something he was unfamiliar with; slicing open Ivan’s lungs, mounting the bones of a rebreather onto the space behind his ribs. He refused to admit to himself that he didn’t really know if it would work, if a rebreather could fix the pressure building in Ivan’s lungs. But he installed it anyway, locking the device onto the template he’d constructed. He worked as quickly as he dared, wiring Ivan’s power source in his augmented heart to the rebreather. Warnings flashed on the screens around the chair, then disappeared as quickly as they’d come. The Sentinel had begun the process of repairing Ivan’s ribs and, seeming satisfied, worked with the rebreather to depressurize his lungs.

Koller watched the oxygen meter raise to acceptable levels, washed his hands and set out to close up the wounds he’d made. Once Ivan’s chest had been sewn up with a quick, deft hand, Vaclav injected him with another strong dose of painkillers. He snatched a sticky note from above his bed and scrawled a note – “Going for food. Be back” – and stuck it to Ivan’s chest, in case he woke up early. 

When he returned, takeout bag in hand – chicken feet for him and clear broth for Ivan, because he wasn’t going to be able to eat anything after having his lungs cut up – there were four vials of neuropozyne on the bedside table. The note was stuck to the top of them, a loopy smiley face drawn on the bottom, and Ivan was gone.

That night, Koller dreamt of wires and blood and organs. He awoke in a cold sweat, staring up at the nightmare clown he’d painted on the ceiling for this very reason. He focused on its grotesque smile until he stopped thinking about detached limbs.

Before he could get up to have a shower and maybe get started on some orders for both his businesses, he became acutely aware of a noise. Someone stomping around on the floor above his head, rifling through the things in his office. He glanced over to the security feed, watching in horror as two Dvali thugs stepped into the secret elevator to his shop. He sprang to life. The adrenaline pumped in his veins, his fight or flight response kicking in. There was a secret area in the hallway, accessible only by the vent behind the painting. Vaclav dove for the painting, managing to wriggle it up and begin to squeeze his way into the vent.

He wasn’t fast enough. The elevator opened and the Dvali men surged into his space. “Hey, stop, _uyobok_!” One of them grabbed him by his ankle and hauled him into the front room. Writhing to get out of the man’s grasp, he attempted to kick at them with his other leg. It only succeeded in pissing them off, and the other one reared back and threw a blinding punch at the center of his face. His nose immediately started gushing blood, but he wasn’t going down without a fight. He activated his strength augs and lashed out, arms catching the both of their legs and sending all three of them to the ground.

Realizing they were underprepared to fight an aug, even a skinny one, the thug that had grabbed his ankle reached for his machine pistol and aimed it towards Vaclav. He braced himself, preparing for the sting of bullets piercing his augmentations at best, unending darkness at worst. Before he could pull the trigger, there was a loud pop and his head exploded in a mess of tissue. Vaclav and the other Dvali both whirled to look at the source of the sound, that had come from the sewer entrance.

Ivan held a battle rifle in one hand, the other curled into a fist at his side. The thug tried to raise his gun, but Ivan was too quick on his sprinter blades. Before Vaclav could process it, Ivan had rushed the thug and kicked his face in with the side of the blade, creating a wide gash across his face that bled until he collapsed in a heap.

Ivan turned his attention to Vaclav, bruised and in shock on the floor. He grabbed the doctor’s arms and pulled him to his feet, inconspicuously checking for head injuries from the way he’d been dragged. Vaclav came back to himself by degrees; first noticing the blood and brain fragments covering his shop, then the pain of a concussion and augs that needed rebooting. Finally, he noticed Ivan, and looked him over in wonder. “You saved my life,” he remarked.

Ivan glanced down at his legs, wincing at the gore that covered them, before looking back at Vaclav. “Just returning the favor.”

The doctor tried to smile, grimacing when he felt a twinge in his nose. Steeling himself, he wiggled it back and forth with minimal pain. Not broken, then, just bruised. He set out to find gauze to dress it, letting out a triumphant “aha” when he found a brand new first-aid kit in one of the drawers. He set it on the workstation, preparing to apply it, when Ivan stepped over and placed a hand on his arm.

“Let me.” Ivan’s hands were steady as he applied the gauze to Vaclav’s face. Koller watched him while he worked. He noted that Ivan had one cool grey augmented eye, Sarif tech. The other was organic, dark and calculating. Both eyes looked into Koller’s own when he was finished. “How’s your head?”

“Should be fine,” Vaclav breathed. He was trapped in between Ivan and the workstation, the intensity of the moment making his head spin. One corner of Ivan’s lips tilted up in a smirk, as if he could read the doctor’s mind. “I don’t know how I can thank-“

Vaclav was cut off by the press of lips against his. There was little heat to it; instead the kiss was a silent question, an experiment. It still had the effect of driving Koller crazy, his heart beating wildly. He pulled back for air and surged forward again, fisting his hands in the front of Ivan’s jacket. The kiss deepened, Ivan pressing every inch of his body against him. His hands came up to cradle Vaclav’s face and pull him impossibly closer.

They stayed that way for what could have been a minute or an hour, refusing to part until they ran out of oxygen. Vaclav pulled back and smiled, the experiment concluded; he never wanted to take his hands off Ivan again.


End file.
